Saturday 21 April 2012

It's Okay to be Gay.



Gay marriage. That seems to be the topic everyone's talking about. The right to marry a man or a woman no matter what sex you may be. It seems pretty simple, right? Wrong. Very, very wrong indeed. Some, for a reason that I do not understand, have managed to find issues with this very simple, very natural way of life. They want to prevent same sex marriage because "marriage is God's gift and should be between a man and a woman". This is of course relying on the untrue fact that everyone in the modern day is Christian or conservative, wanting to keep "traditions". They're not. People have moved on, it's over, everyone's equal. Or not, even though the majority of the population probably don't care whether someone is gay, female or black anymore because we've all realised how stupid we were being, there is still a group of people spread out into different countries who are not willing to accept the fact we're all human beings.

In my personal opinion, being gay is both a choice as well as a natural desire. Gay rights have allowed those who prefer the same gender to choose whether they ignore it, if they really want to, or to pursue their instinct and love whomever they long for. I think we all have it in us to be homosexual, because it's basic human desire to be intimate with one another. It's basic animal desire, actually, it is one of the nicer attributes of life. Love and sex isn't just about reproducing, it's about the need to be touched and to be intimate with each other. We're not solitary animals, we're sociable, we would be locked inside our own heads if it weren't for everyone else. It's just that some people feel more attracted to certain genders, like their own, than they do the opposing sex. I don't believe it's a 'thing' that's decided the day you were conceived, it's the way your subconscious decided you preferred to desire.

What really shocked me recently, however, is what a teacher told their religious studies class, in my class, about what "changing the meaning of marriage" would do. At the time, I was confused as to whether they were telling a fact that certain groups of individuals would then fall into a dangerous category or whether is was just prejudice. They told the class that if gay people would be allowed to marry and not just have a civil partnership, thus changing the belief that marriage is between a man and woman, then issues such as pedophilia and incest would "fall under the radar". The way that the teacher said it meant it was difficult for me to judge whether they were stating someone else's opinion or their own but after discussing it with my parents and looking back, it became clear they were using a very prejudice opinion to sound like a credible fact. During the class I did find myself thinking, and expressing that I'm pretty sure you can't put homosexuals and pedophiles under the same classification I was, worryingly, beginning to believe that this was an actual issue. I was under influence because of my ignorance of the matter. That's never happened to me before.

I now realise that the judgement the teacher had made, made very little sense. Changing the traditional definition of marriage no longer shared by every individual to a more open minded one will not suddenly change the law. Disregarding old fashioned Christian views will not allow older men to marry young children. Incest is already something that happens without being noticed and a change in a word's meaning will not spontaneously make the law allow family to marry family. The whole statement is absurd and a gigantic leap in conclusion that was quite scarily made to seem liable to an entire class of ignorant youth. When the pupils would argue points against the judgement the teacher would simply reply with "but you're opening a whole can of worms" or something along those lines as if it were an issue that actually existed.

This not only caused me to experience a possibly non deliberate form of indoctrination but quite extreme prejudice as well. I've already exercised my belief of not believing everything you're taught but  now I have properly witnessed an untrue fact being taught as if it were real. I think, in a way, it's good to be made aware of these possibilities and to stay individual and independent with whatever someone tells you, question it, question whether you want to believe it. More importantly stay away from discrimination and fight for rights such as gay marriage because then you're a little bit closer to a more equal world.

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